We are an interdisciplinary eHealth Work Group located at the University of Regensburg's Department for Psychiatry & Psychotherapy. Researching the future of healthcare. Topics interested in: #Healthcare #Digitalhealth #eHealth #Coronavirus #COVID19 #FreeHealthcare
Ever had a look at our NUM COMPASS project homepage? You can find all sorts of relevant information ox1n our #research, the project goals as well as the relevance of #healthApps particularly in times of #COVID on there! https://num-compass.science/en/
This is a fantastic layout of the current landscape of digital health. What would be exciting is to also inlay the market opportunities for each segment. These are exciting times!
A recent article in the New York Times opened my eyes to an interesting digital trend: more and more people are “attending” sessions with a therapist via Skype and other videoconferencing technologies.
With text messages and Twitter slowly starting to replace face to face visits and telephone calls, it seems only fitting that therapy sessions rely on technology, too. After all, online tools give you the ability to communicate with anyone, anywhere, at any time, meaning you can talk to your therapist whenever you feel the urge. Yet, for all of their benefits, digital therapy sessions have many drawbacks as well. As the author of the article discusses, lack of eye contact has the potential to make communication awkward and prevent a true relationship from developing. Furthermore, important cues that a therapist may derive from a patient’s body language just don’t exist in the digital space.
Certainly, there are pros and cons of having your therapist only a click away. What do you think?
One of our most recent posts in the news feed of our Corona Health and Corona Check Apps. Want to stay up to date with reliable information and interesting background knowledge? Then download our free eHealth apps from any Apple of Google Play App Store
Apple:
Moderna on Monday said its experimental vaccine was effective at preventing COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus.
The findings came from a massive and well-designed study, but they haven’t been reviewed by outside experts or regulators. Last week, Pfizer said its vaccine was effective in preventing COVID-19, sending markets soaring on hopes that an effective vaccine would help end the pandemic.
Moderna’s shot comes with one crucial advantage over Pfizer’s: It doesn’t require a deep freeze. Instead, the shot can be stored at standard refrigerator temperatures for up to a month, Moderna said on Monday.
Hospitals and health officials were working to figure out how to store and distribute Pfizer’s shot, particularly in more rural areas, because the process can involve dry ice and special freezers. Some hospitals and city and state health officials were seeking to acquire the special freezers to store that shot, Reuters reported.
Pfizer’s shot is stored at extremely cold temperatures
Pfizer’s vaccine needs to be shipped and stored at minus 94 degrees Fahrenheit, a temperature colder than what’s needed for most other vaccines. That can be challenging in the US and presents even more of an obstacle in some other countries.
Pfizer will ship the vaccine by air and land using dry ice, along with reusable GPS temperature-monitoring devices.
The pharmaceutical giant is working on a next-generation version of its shot that wouldn’t need to be kept at extremely cold temperatures, the company’s chief scientific officer told Business Insider.
Moderna’s requires only standard refrigeration
Moderna’s vaccine, meanwhile, can be stored using standard refrigeration for up to 30 days, the company said on Monday. That greatly simplifies the distribution challenge of Pfizer’s shot.
The vaccine is stable for a month at temperatures between 36 degrees Fahrenheit and 46 degrees Fahrenheit.
Moderna’s shot can also be stored for up to six months at minus 4 degrees Fahrenheit, a typical temperature requirement that hospitals and clinics are used to.
This is really a great way to get reliable information and at the same time contribute to research in these strange times. As two of the very few corona-related medical apps that have been licensed for both the Apple AppStore and the Google Playstore, these apps keep you updated with current news related to the #covid19 #pandemic, allow you to self-check if you’re experiencing COVID-related symptoms, and deal with #mentalhealth issues in these sometimes challenging times.
The likelihood that a coronavirus infection will prove fatal has dropped by nearly a third since April due to improved treatment, researchers at the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) said on Thursday.
In the United States, COVID-19 now kills about 0.6% of people infected with the virus, compared with around 0.9% early in the pandemic, IHME Director Dr. Christopher Murray told Reuters.
He said statistics reflect that doctors have figured out better ways to care for patients, including the use of blood thinners and oxygen support. Effective treatments, such as the generic steroid dexamethasone, have also been identified.
Experts have struggled to accurately measure a crucial metric in the pandemic: the fatality rate, or percentage of people infected with the pathogen who are likely to die. The difficulty is exacerbated by the fact that many people who become infected do not experience symptoms and are never identified.
IHME said it had been using an infection-fatality rate (IFR) derived from surveys after accounting for age. Older people are at much higher risk of dying from COVID-19 than younger people.
“We know the risk is profoundly age-related. For every one year of age, the risk of death increases by 9%,” Murray said.
The Seattle institute, an influential source of COVID-19 forecasts, said it has also determined that the fatality rate for COVID-19 is worse in communities with high levels of obesity.
The group said it has now switched to an IFR that varies over time - declining since the first pandemic wave in March and April by around 0.19% per day until the beginning of September.
It also varies across locations as a function of obesity prevalence, and continues to vary based on population distribution by age.
IHME said its analysis of age-standardized fatality rates from more than 300 surveys suggests a 30% decline since March/April.
Despite that positive trend, infections and hospitalizations have spiked across the country in recent weeks. The group said its modeling suggests 439,000 cumulative U.S. deaths by March 1, and a peak of daily deaths in mid-January at 2,200.
Today we’d like to introduce you to the two #Corona #eHealth #apps we here at have created and contributed to in order to efficiently deal with the current situation. As two of the very few corona-related medical apps that have been licensed for both the Apple AppStore and the Google Playstore, these apps keep you updated with current news related to the #covid19#pandemic, allow you to self-check if you’re experiencing COVID-related symptoms, and deal with #mentalhealth issues in these sometimes challenging times.
Click the Follow-button and stay tuned for an in-depth presentation of both apps!
Links for the Apps below.
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Apple:
https://apps.apple.com/de/app/corona-health/id1519399353
https://apps.apple.com/de/app/corona-check-screening/id1504712226
Android:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.dbis.haugxhaug.coronahealth
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.coronacheck.haugxhaug.testyourcorona
Slovakia's coronavirus testing and quarantine scheme, running over the past two weekends, has helped cut the proportion of infections by more than half, Prime Minister Igor Matovic said on Monday.
The country of 5.5 million tested 3.6 million people, excluding small children and some senior citizens, over the first weekend in November, with those testing positive having to go into quarantine.
It repeated tests for just over 2 million over this past weekend when testing took place only in more affected areas, with the infection rate turning out to be much lower thanks to the earlier quarantine orders.
The scheme has been watched by other countries struggling with a spike in coronavirus cases.
Taking into account districts that were tested on both weekends, the infection rate dropped from 1.47% on the first weekend to 0.62% of those who took the test on the second weekend, Matovic told a news conference.
Including some additional tests done among police services, senior homes and companies, the second round returned 13,509 positive results.
“We are going into a tough winter,” Matovic said. “We have an extraordinarily effective tool in antigen testing that cuts the share of infected people by 58%.”
The testing was free and voluntary, but the government imposed a lockdown, including a ban on work commutes, on those who refused to take the test.
People have to carry around certificates saying they took the test and tested negative.
The scheme used antigen swab tests that return results within 15-30 minutes but are less accurate than standard laboratory PCR tests.The government has argued that while it was aware the tests may miss a sizeable proportion of those infected, it was still worth it and repeated testing narrowed that probability of falsely negative results.
Slovakia has not been among hardest-hit European countries, but it saw an acceleration of cases in October and hoped the testing would help it avoid a surge seen in the neighbouring Czech Republic, which has suffered Europe’s worst infection and death rates in the past weeks.
Slovakia has recorded 76,072 cases through standard PCR testing so far and 366 deaths. The antigen testing, including a pilot scheme and the two large-scale rounds, identified 57,462 cases.
Many COVID-19 survivors are likely to be at greater risk of developing mental illness, psychiatrists said on Monday, after a large study found 20% of those infected with the coronavirus are diagnosed with a psychiatric disorder within 90 days.